have removed so many barriers to fair-play for women should press on
more cheerfully than ever to remove those that remain.

(_December_, 1882)

SECRET SOCIETIES

The melancholy death of young Mr. Leggett, a student at the Cornell
University, has undoubtedly occasioned a great deal of thought in every
college in the country upon secret societies. Professor Wilder, of Cornell,
has written a very careful and serious letter, in which he strongly opposes
them, plainly stating their great disadvantages, and citing the order
of Jesuits as the most powerful and thoroughly organized of all secret
associations, and therefore the one in which their character and tendency
may best be observed. The debate recalls the history of the Antimasonic
excitement in this country, which is, however, seldom mentioned in recent
years, so that the facts may not be familiar to the reader.

In the year 1826 William Morgan, living in Batavia, in the western part of
New York, near Buffalo, was supposed to intend the publication of a book
which would reveal the secrets of Masonry. The Masons in the vicinity were
angry, and resolved to prevent the publication, and made several forcible
but ineffective attempts for that purpose. On the 11th of September, 1826,
a party of persons from Canandaigua came to Batavia and procured the arrest
of Morgan upon a criminal charge, and he was carried to Canandaigua for
examination. He was acquitted, but was immediately arrested upon a civil
process, upon which an execution was issued, and he was imprisoned in the
jail at Canandaigua. The next evening he was discharged at the instance of
those who had caused his arrest, and was taken from the jail after nine
o'clock in the evening. Those who had obtained the discharge instantly
seized him, gagged and bound him, and throwing him into a carriage, hurried
off to Rochester. By relays of horses and by different hands he was borne
along, until he was lodged in the magazine of Fort Niagara, at the mouth of
the Niagara River.

The circumstances of his arrest, and those that had preceded it,
had aroused and inflamed the minds of the people in Batavia and the
neighborhood. A committee was appointed at a public meeting to ascertain
all the facts, and to bring to justice any criminals that might be found.
They could discover only that Morgan had been seized upon his discharge in
Canandaigua and hurried off towards Rochester; but beyond that, nothing.
The excitement deepened and spread. A great crime had apparently been
committed, and it was hidden in absolute secrecy. Other meetings were held
in other towns, and other committees were appointed, and both meetings and
committees were composed of men of both political parties. Investigation
showed that Masons only were implicated in the crime, and that scarcely a
Mason aided the inquiry; that many Masons ridiculed and even justified the
offence; that the committees were taunted with their inability to procure
the punishment of the offenders in courts where judges, sheriffs, juries,
and witnesses were Masons; that witnesses disappeared; that the committees
were reviled; and gradually Masonry itself was held responsible for the
mysterious doom of Morgan.

The excitement became a frenzy. The Masons were hated and denounced as the
Irish were in London after the "Irish night," or the Roman Catholics during
the Titus Oates fury. In January, 1827, some of those who had been arrested
were tried, and it was hoped that the evidence at their trials would clear
the mystery. But they pleaded guilty, and this hope was baffled. Meanwhile
a body of delegates from the various committees met at Lewiston to
ascertain the fate of Morgan, and they discovered that in or near the
magazine in which he had been confined he had been put to death. His book,
with its revelations, had been published, and what was not told was, of
course, declared to be infinitely worse than the actual